Introduction
In recent years, with the rapidly development of Chinese economic, Chinese people now lives a better life than decades ago.Outboundtourism, as a result of the better living standard, has become more feasible in Chinesepeople’s life.There are increasingly number of people who are rich enough to travel abroad to enjoy foreign cultures.For travelers, go abroad to meet different people and enjoy unique history of other countries is helpful for them to broaden their horizon and enrich their life experiences.For foreign countries, the growth of tourist will no doubt promote their economic develop, which is absolutely a win-win situation.However, recent reports indicated that those foreign countries might have complex feelings about Chinese tourists.This article is a reflection after reading the news about a 15-year-old Chinese tourist carved his name in Chinese characters into the 3,500-year-old stone at Egypt\'s Luxor Temple.I will write about why foreign peoples have bad impreion onChinese tourist and what can we do to deal with this problem.
Background
The news is about a 15-year-old Chinese tourist who craved \"Ding Minhao paid a visit here\" on the 3,000-year-old stone of Egypt temple, which lead to a great backlash among Chinesenetizens.Actually, deeply in mind, we all know that this is not happen by accident, this is a common phenomenon among Chinese tourists.
Whether you have traveled much in China or not, only if you have visited to a popular beauty spot or a historic site can you find misbehaviors like graffiti or spit everywhere.When you visit to the Great Wall, you can see graffiti on almost each brick Chinese tourists can reach, most of the words are “somebody paid a visit here” or “A will love B forever”, I don’t know exactly why they do this, maybe they were just too proud for themselves to stand on this majestic construct and they want others know their name or they want to see their “footsteps” when they come back in their later life.Whatever they want is not really important, the thing is obviously that they had ignore the great harm they had brings to the historic site.In China, there must be no beauty spot can escape from this kind of sabotage.When those tourists are rich enough to afford travel abroad, doubtlely, they will bring their bad tourism habit to other countries.According to the report, it’s not hard to find a Chinese graffiti in most famous foreign beauty spots like the boy in the news, then, there will be more worldwide invaluable historic sites get injured.
Social Response
Chinese netizens only used one day to find out Ding Jinhao,the boy who left a graffiti in Egypt temple.They exposing and criticizing the teenager for his bad behavior, they said his behavior make them feel shameful.The boy’s parents have apologized through a local newspaper to both Egyptians and domestic nationals for their son\'s act, they said the boy had realized his mistake and they wish for an opportunity to self-improve.Netizens point out that bad behaviors will causeforeigners misunderstand about Chinese people, even about our country, actually, it does.Chinese travelers are now the top source of tourism cash in the world, by 2015, 100 million Chinese will travel abroad, according to a new report by the United Nations World Tourism Organization(UNWTO).But people in foreign countries do have much complains about Chinese tourists’unbearable behavior such as loud conversations, small tips, deceptive behavior and cutting in line.However, Chinese people will bring great benefits for their travel destinations ,except for the benefits of local hotel or beauty spots,Chinese tourists also like do shopping while traveling abroad, and they are more prefer articles of luxury than souvenir.For local society, it’s obviously a great potentialpecuniary benefit, but local residence may don’t think so.Katy Khan, from Thailand sayed: \"Here in Thailand we can\'t stand Chinese tourists and are complaining to the government about it.It\'s pretty bad.Chinese people are quite rude compared to any other culture I\'ve ever experienced.\"Although there are other voices which consider that most Chinese people are polite and kind but a great amount of people have the similar feelings with Katy Khan.In order to improve the bad impreion which Chinese tourist impreed the world, the Chinese government recently promulgated a national convention calling on the Chinese people to take note of their behavior and act as civilized tourists when travelling.As one of the netizen says:Leaving graffiti willnot only damaging historic sites but also demonstrating poor education and behavior.Tourists should try to behave polite and friendly to show thatChinese are well-educated and civilized.
Conclusion The Egypt temple case is not isolated, it indicates how modern Chinese people are lack of virtue.Graffiti is one of the Chinese tourist’s bad behavior, we can see it because it have evidence which will lasts long, how about the others which we can’t see, such as cutting in lines, it won’t do some terrible harm to the touring ground but it will make other people feel Chinese people are rude and inconsiderable.Therefore, as far as I am concerned, not only the government but also individuals should pay attention to this situation and individuals should learn to behave themselves while traveling.In addition, parents should teach their children to distinguish right from wrong, the boy’s parent should take majority responsibility to their son’s misbehavior.
Bibliography
[1] Karla Cripps, Chinese tourism: The good, the bad and the backlash [EB/OL].http://edition.cnn.com/ 2013–04–12.[2]Chinese tourists\' graffiti sparks national image discuion[EB/OL].http://news.xinhuanet.com/ 2013-05-17
Appendix Netizen outrage after Chinese tourist defaces Egyptian temple By Hiufu Wong, CNN May 29, 2013 -- Updated 1109 GMT (1909 HKT)
Hong Kong (CNN) -- Parents of a 15-year-old Chinese tourist have apologized after the teenager defaced a stone sculpture in an ancient Egyptian temple with graffiti.The act drew ire in both Egypt and China -- generating a maive online backlash amongst China\'s unforgiving netizens.The vandal carved \'Ding Jinhao was here\' in Chinese in the 3,500 year old Luxor Temple.This was photographed by an embarraed Chinese traveler and shared on weibo, China\'s micro-blogging site on May 24.\"The saddest moment in Egypt.I\'m so embarraed that I want to hide myself.I said to the Egyptian tour guide, \"I\'m really sorry,\'\" that traveler wrote on the original weibo post.\"We want to wipe off the marking with a towel.But we can\'t use water since it is a 3,500 relic.\" It didn\'t take long -- actually, just a day -- before outraged netizens tracked down Ding in Nanjing.Slammed online and exposed further in the mainstream, Ding\'s parents quickly contacted media outlets.\"We want to apologize to the Egyptian people and to people who have paid attention to this case acro China,\" Ding\'s mother said in a China Daily report.Ding\'s parents said they shouldered the responsibility of what their son did, adding he had learned his leon.The original weibo post was re-tweeted almost 90,000 times, received over 18,000 comments and was widely distributed acro local media.\"Reading this disastrous news this morning is heartbreaking.I despise this behavior, especially in Egypt -- the place I love.Now, I just want to say \'Sorry\' to Egypt,\" commented weibo user \"Net bug jingjing.\" \"It\'s a disgrace to our entire race!\" said another angry micro-blogger.In a state-run Xinhua media report, one of the agency\'s photographers said local Egyptian staff had worked to try to clean the sculpture.While there was some improvement, the graffiti could not be totally removed.Outbound Chinese tourism has expanded rapidly in recent years.In 2012, Chinese overtook Americans and Germans as the world\'s top international tourism spenders, with 83 million people spending a record US$102 billion on international tourism.That growth has brought with it a backlash in some industry sectors.
Earlier this month, Beijing called on its nation\'s tourists to improve their behavior, with Vice Premier Wang Yang stating it was important to project a good image of Chinese tourists.
http://edition.cnn.com/?hpt=travel_hp_row1left
